


All you zombies

by dorcas_gustine



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-13
Updated: 2010-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorcas_gustine/pseuds/dorcas_gustine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's so bright these days, like a summer that's never going to end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All you zombies

At first, he thinks it must be happiness.

He's not used to it after all, and the only time he remembers ever being happy it's before his father left. It's too far away now, though, lost in the uncertainty of something not unlike a dream.

He's building his present into that past, in fact, to erase all the bad memories of an absence, of an empty place laid at the table.

He's building _new_ memories, his childhood doesn't exist anymore.

He frowns at the bright light as he comes out of the flat. He blinks to let his eyes adjust.

He throws his keys in the air and catches them as they fall, they twinkle in the sunshine.

It's so bright these days, like a summer that's never going to end.

All this brightness when before it just was shadows, and doubt, and madness.

It _must_ be happiness.

He can't remember ever being so happy, so contented.

Well, he probably had been when he was a kid, but his parents died when he was twelve, and there hasn't been much happiness after that.

 

*  
**  
*

 

"What?" Annie asks, smiling, and the late afternoon sun seems to shine this particular shade of orange just for her gentle features, her clear eyes.

Sam has to look away, unable to meet her gaze.

He loves her, he knows this much, but sometimes he looks at her and feels like he should expect somebody else. Somebody with longer hair, and darker eyes. Somebody who smiles less often.

He looks ahead, instead, his chin held high as they slowly walk side by side, towards their future.

It's so hot that he can't quite make out where the end of streets is. It's like in the desert, a mirage, far away in front of them the world seems to be melting away.

"Sam?" she calls him, and when he turns she smiles at him. "What is it?"

Sam stares at her, but for the life of him, he can't remember what they were talking about.

 

*  
**  
*

At first he thinks it must be happiness, how everything's so bright, so right, like a promise fulfilled. Or a wish granted.

In his peripheral vision he sees bright colours and shapes blending together until everything is only white, _blank_. Like the corners of a picture, fading away to nothingness.

He's got the illogical fear of turning around and finding that everything's gone.

It's not, though. He turns around and he sees everything that's there to see.

He sees the CID offices, and Annie, Chris, Ray and the Guv.

Everything and everyone accounted for.

Five people to fight the crime in the whole of Manchester, you'd think they were burdened with a lot of work to do, but they manage, one way or the other.

 

*  
**  
*

 

Nelson lays the pint in front of him, and in Sam's brightly happy world, he's the only one that meets his gaze with deep, serious eyes.

"Nelson," he says suddenly, out of the blue, surprising even himself. "Do you think it possible for a dream to become real?"

Nelson stares at him. "I think the actual question, Sam, is," he says, "do _you_?"

Sam blinks at him, then shakes his head, something tickling at the back of his mind, something that feels _important_.

His musings are interrupted when Gene stumbles to sit, or rather land, on the stool next to him.

"Tyler," he says with a nod of greeting, then he practically drapes himself over the bar to fill a pint of bitter for himself.

"Bloody barman," Sam hears him mutter. "He's never here when you need him."

Sam snorts and shakes his head, as a matter of fact it's been a long time since he's last seen the barman.

So long he can hardly recall his face.

 

*  
**  
*

 

One day, Ray doesn't come to work.

"Where's he?" Sam asks.

"The flu, Boss," Chris replies.

There are no United matches near, so Sam guesses it's the truth.

Ray doesn't come the day after, either.

Nor the day after that.

"Where's he?" he finally asks Gene.

Gene frowns at him. "Who?"

But Sam blinks at him, what he wanted to ask now forgotten. "Never mind," he shakes his head, and goes back to his chair.

Sam stares at the empty desk in front of him, next to Chris'. It's a spare one, it's never had an owner as long as he can remember.

 

*  
**  
*

 

"There you go, Boss," Chris says, dropping the folder in front of him. "The papers you asked me."

Sam takes the folder and reads the label, but the name doesn't stick with him, and when he opens it and leafs through the pages it's nothing he hasn't read before.

He could go to the collator's, swap all the names, all the folders, and they still would tell the same story.

There're victims, there're criminals and then there's them, catching the criminals.

It feels like a Disney movie sometimes, or a comic book, he, the Guv and Annie fighting to maintain the peace.

The three of them against the whole world.

And they'll always win.

 

*  
**  
*

 

Sam looks up from the file he's been reading, the words are blurring into vague black smudges.

Annie and the Guv are in front of him, the Guv sitting at his desk, Annie perched on the edge of it. Like him, they're absorbed in their current case.

He sighs and shakes his head, a collar like this needs more than three people working on it.

Gene raises his head and stares at him questioningly. There's a vague rustle of papers from Sam's right, but it sounds muffled as if coming from far away and he doesn't give it much thought.

He sees the ever-present light from the corner of his eye, almost like over exposure, but he doesn't turn to look, he knows everything is as it should be.

"What is it, Tyler?" Gene asks.

"Don't you think we could do this faster if we had some help?"

"Who're you gonna ask?" he snorts. "There's nobody else here."

"Yes, but…" Sam trails off, not really knowing if he had a valid point when he's started this conversation. Not that this could be regarded as such, it's just him saying something and Gene barking something else in response, or vice versa.

And these days that's all, really, it feels like it's been this way forever sometimes.

It probably has.

Sam sighs and lets his eyes glide all around Gene's office. It's small, but big enough for just the two of them.

His eyes linger on the door.

It's so bright outside that he can't really see much.

Nothing at all, in fact.

 

*  
**  
*

 

"Guv," he says suddenly, breaking the seemingly endless silence. "Don't you- Have you ever had the feeling-" - _that dreams exist only to be dreams?_

He can't ask that, though, not to _Gene_, especially not when it sounds like it might be a rhetorical question.

He turns and opens his mouth to say something, or maybe ask a question, but closes it after a moment.

He wonders why he's wanted to do that in the first place, when there's nobody to talk to.

 

*  
**  
*

 

If he really makes an effort, though, sometimes he can remember, more than a smell, a faint odour, a flavour. But it's so pale and far away, the smell of memories.

He recalls vague images, sometimes, but they blur and disappear before he can even think them. And he hears sounds, noises, meaningless to his ears.

This is all wrong.

There used to be somebody, but it's only ghosts, now, dead people, they don't exist, not anymore.

Maybe they never did.

After all everything he knows is here, it's always been here.

And it's nothing.

He closes his eyes, but it's the same, he has nothing to see either way.

His eyes are open now. Or maybe they aren't, there's no difference, really.

There's nothing, _nobody_ but him.

"Where are you now?" he asks to the nothingness. "Who were you?"

There's no answer.

"There's only me, now," he whispers, looking from behind his eyelids at something that isn't there. "I miss you so much."

There's nothing to look at.

Not even him.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write something like this for a long time, but after writing a few lines back in April 2008, when the series ended, I didn't know how to proceed.
> 
> Then I re-read the short story '_All You Zombies_' by Robert Heinlein (which, by the way, I highly recommend), and the last paragraph inspired me. (It's not spoilerish for the short story, by the way).
> 
> _"The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from - but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once - and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.  
> You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me - Jane - here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!"_
> 
> And then, Andy posted [The Man Who Sold The World](http://community.livejournal.com/jumping_off/26670.html), and Loz posted [Palimpsest](http://lozenger8.livejournal.com/594944.html), both of which inspired me greatly, and thus the fic was written. Hope you liked it, :)


End file.
